Move the "Remove Missing" button in the project manager to the top panel

[SnowyStoat]

Describe the project you are working on

N/A

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

Just keeping the project manager consistent, is all

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Since UI changes are being made, we might as well continue bringing the UI closer to the 2019 proposal.

As @starry-abyss said in their comment, the point is separating global buttons from project-specific ones. Removing missing projects obviously applies to however many missing projects the user has, not just to a select one. So it would make sense for it to be grouped together with the New, Import, and Scan buttons. If someone wants to remove only a few of their missing projects, they can just use the Remove button on each one individually. Alternatively, pressing Remove Missing would bring up a popup with all the missing projects selected, which would allow the user to deselect the items they don't want to remove.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

Current:

Proposed:

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

I don't think Godot scripts apply to the project manager.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

The project manager itself is core.

[AThousandShips]

This would take up more of the already quite limited real estate of the bar on smaller screens, I'd suggest just moving the button to the bottom of the sidebar instead to separate it

[SnowyStoat]

If it's at the very bottom, the global -> project-specific hierarchy would be completely lost, better just keep it as is then

[AThousandShips]

How would it be lost? Its already not in the project specific group but grouped with them, so nothing is lost? Just put it next to "About"

[SnowyStoat]

Then why is it grouped with the project-specific buttons if it's not one of them?

Honestly I'm more curious about what kind of space gets reduced on smaller screens, so that I can maybe think of a way to reorganize the buttons better.

[AThousandShips]

See your own screenshots? The line edit gets shrunk, on smaller screens there's little space over there, it's not very spacious as it is

I'm agreeing with you that it doesn't belong where it is, but I'd say to move it down instead because the area you suggest moving it to is crowded already

[SnowyStoat]

OK so I was thinking about removing the sidebar entirely and putting the project-related buttons next to the projects, but that doesn't really seem to help. I have a PC with a smaller screen so I could test for myself just how crowded it gets, but unfortunately it's not really available at the moment.

I would suggest putting the search bar (and perhaps the sorting options) below the buttons, but I remember someone really wanted to have more vertical space for the projects, so I'm not sure what to do here.

[miv391]

How about moving the buttons (New, Import, Scan, Remove Missing) on a row of their own. Filter projects and Sort would be on their own row. Something like this very pretty Paint drawing:

Edit: SnowyStoat already suggested this.

[SnowyStoat]

I did suggest something like this, but see how there's a lot of empty space on the right? Surely it could be used for something.

[miv391]

Then how about creating two button groups to the right panel. For example:

Projects
[ New ]
[ Import ]
[ Scan ]
[ Remove Missing ]

Selected Project
[ Edit ]
[ Run ]
[ Rename ]
[ Manage Tags ]
[ Remove ]

I don't remember if there are any current user interfaces that would have something similar.

[AThousandShips]

That's what was changed previously away from, so that'd undo already done work, which feels pointless, see:

• Reorganize buttons in the project manager godot#50674

[miv391]

The buttons were technically grouped, but the visual clues were very, very subtle. Having group titles (labels) and much more space between the groups could make that design much better.

[SnowyStoat]

Made this mockup, on a smaller screen. Search bar size seems like even less of an issue to me. If anything, these buttons are more crowded on my bigger screen since I don't care enough to resize the window.

[starry-abyss]

I think we could move Remove Missing below to be near About button (which is also global).

Or we could add a hamburger "..." button in the top, hiding there not frequent actions Scan and Remove Missing (and more new in future maybe).

[Calinou]

Or we could add a hamburger "..." button in the top, hiding there not frequent actions Scan and Remove Missing (and more new in future maybe).

I use Scan all the time when setting up Godot on a new system, so I'd rather not have it removed to a secondary menu. Remember that discoverability is important too 🙂

[YuriSizov]

I use Scan all the time when setting up Godot on a new system

To be fair, how often does that happen?

[Calinou]

To be fair, how often does that happen?

It can happen quite often if I use self-contained mode or reset editor settings in some way.

This would be less of a problem if there was a default autoscan path configured, but I proposed this a while ago and it didn't get much support: godotengine/godot#47724

[YuriSizov]

This would be less of a problem if there was a default autoscan path configured, but I proposed this a while ago and it didn't get much support: godotengine/godot#47724

Well, I support it, just not the idea of restricting it to the Documents folder 🙂

[miv391]

Project settings dialog already has a design where there are two rows of controls. I don't see why the same approach wouldn't work here. If the very small screens are a problem, then dynamically change the project boxes lower in the list view if the dialog gets too small. That could be done by scaling the icon by 0.5 and putting both project name and path on the same row. If the screen is still too small, remove the project path and show it only as a popup hint.

[starry-abyss]

@Calinou Actually I think Scan button specifically should be instead a tickbox inside Import dialog (the one with the file manager, not the one with red errors), because it's same as import but recursive and without confirmation! :P But didn't have time to make a PR.

Reason is having one button for all import (easier to understand) and postponing the decision whether to use recursive mode or not for the last moment (more ergonomic than the need to exit path selection and push another button just to change the import mode).

[Mickeon]

I don't see the harm the way jt currently is. Perhaps the button shouldn't even show up if there's no missing projects outright? It does stand out a lot even if it commonly is disabled.

[timothyqiu]

I want to proposal something similar too. Speaking of horizontal space:

• The "Scan" button can be merged into "Import".
• The "Remove Missing" button can be hidden when nothing is missing.
• The current search box is much wider than it needs to be.
• The sort dropdown could be as narrow as a single icon button, like the sort switches in the main editor.